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Four Noble Truths: Dukkha (3 of 5) Happiness

Good morning, and this is the third talk in a series of five to discuss the first of the Four Noble Truths, the noble truth of suffering. The task of this truth is to understand suffering. It's a call to stop and take a good look. The bumper sticker for Buddhists could be, "I stop for suffering," in the sense that this is really something to look at and to be with.

But it can seem that this emphasis on suffering lends itself to despair and to discouragement because, what are we supposed to do? Just suffer? Suffer more? Just look at the suffering, which is so difficult to have?

The Zen Teacher and the Search for Happiness

A good number of years ago, I learned of a woman who lived in this general area as a teenager—I think maybe in a place called Menlo Park, near here. She grew up there in the 1960s, and Menlo Park was one of these centers for the Grateful Dead, Ken Kesey, and the Merry Pranksters, kind of one part of the bubbling up and origins of the whole psychedelic movement.

I don't know if she was connected to that, but she and her high school friends—two other young women—had heard that there was a Zen teacher in San Francisco who could teach them how to get high without taking psychedelics, without taking drugs. And so they traveled up to San Francisco—it was about 35 miles, I think—to see Shunryu Suzuki Roshi^[1], the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center.

At that time, Suzuki Roshi was in Japantown at a little temple for the Japanese community, before he started the Zen Center, so maybe it was 1965 or something. They came, he received them, and they told him why they were there. They'd heard that he could teach them how to be happy, how to get high without taking any drugs. He sat down, welcomed them in, and proceeded to give them a teaching about the Four Noble Truths: the truth of suffering, the truth of the arising of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the practice leading to the cessation of suffering.

Well, this was not what these young women had gone to San Francisco to learn—to get this lecture about suffering. However, as the Zen teacher was talking about suffering, he was just so happy. And the incongruity of talking about suffering and being so happy was the reason why one of those three went on to become a Zen student, and was a Zen student for many, many years.

Cultivating Well-Being to Face Suffering

So yes, Buddhism does emphasize suffering: looking at it, making an honest assessment of it, and not turning away, shutting down, pretending it's different, or making some kind of romantic view of reality that doesn't really recognize the severity, the seriousness, and the scale of suffering that human beings experience. Buddhism is meant to be quite realistic.

At the same time, the Buddha also emphasized happiness. He was known to be a very happy person. He referred to the people who had engaged in the practice of freedom from suffering as the "happy ones." And if you read the teachings of the Buddha, the instructions he gave for a path to the end of suffering, that path is a happy path. He emphasized doing things that cultivated happiness, gladness, and joy—some people call it rapture—a variety of forms of well-being.

That cultivation of well-being and happiness creates the conditions to be able to really be with suffering and look at suffering in the deepest kind of way. It prepares the ground for a person to be able to see suffering in its depth and fullness. The suffering of human beings has layers and layers and layers. Often what we see on the surface, what we identify as our immediate suffering, has deep tentacles and deep roots inside. To really go deep, to feel the core, central suffering of our lives—that which maybe has been our companion for a lifetime, that which doesn't come and go, but that you can really feel if you're quiet and still, the deepest attachments, the deepest things that we care most about, are most scared of, or most resist—to really go down there, that's the task of practice.

But to do that in a deep way, the idea is to do it from a place of well-being, of tremendous stability, being grounded, and having happiness and joy as part of it. That certainly was true for me. In some of the biggest insights or biggest encounters with suffering I've ever had in my life, which were in deep meditation practice, it was kind of a paradox because I had so much happiness and joy at that point that the happiness and joy became the container, the ground, and the foundation with which to be present for suffering.

Now, I don't say this with the implication that it's easy and that it's accessible. But I'm saying this as an encouragement that Buddhist practice is not only about sitting with suffering. In popular culture, there's often the idea that the First Noble Truth says that "life is suffering." The Buddha never said that. That's not really a Buddhist teaching unless the teachings are understood as being, "Within life, there is suffering," and maybe you want to put in parentheses or put it in bold, "and there is also happiness."

That's why translating dukkha^[2] as "painful"—"life is painful"—lends itself more to the idea that that's all there is. Yes, of course, it's painful in certain times and places and ways, but there's much more to that characteristic of life. Life can also be happy. The Buddha not only emphasized that the path to freedom from suffering is a happy one, but he also emphasized that those who had gone through to the other side, to the end of suffering, were the happy ones. He used the word sukha^[3]—they were the happy ones.

Finding Peace in a Suffering World

Some people have a certain kind of contentment, a happiness, a feeling of rightness knowing that there is a path, a way, a practice where we can be honestly present for how difficult life is for us, and just to know that this is possible. People have been doing this since the time of the Buddha. The sufferings that we have today are maybe on a different scale because we have so many more people in the world than in the time of the Buddha. So in that sense, the aggregate perhaps feels bigger, but it's the same suffering as the time of the Buddha. In some ways, it is not much different than before.

The Buddha lived in a time of much suffering. The historical analysis of what happened near the end of the Buddha's life is that his social world was collapsing. Kingdoms were being usurped, countries were going to war, and his senior disciples were dying. He was an old man with a very bad back, quite sick. His world was falling apart, and yet he died peacefully. He died at peace, he died happily, he died in a very deep, wonderful state of meditation. He was able to find a happy way, a peaceful way that could coexist with the suffering of the world. He wasn't burdened by that suffering, but he was realistic about it. He didn't take it on his shoulders as being his responsibility, but he was responsive to it and addressed it. So, this idea that yes, there is suffering, and there is happiness.

Building the Foundation: Ethics and Contentment

To hear that life is suffering can be distressing and discouraging, and as I said, that's not really a Buddhist teaching. But to hear on the other side that the path to the end of suffering involves happiness and joy can also be distressing, because sometimes happiness and joy are not accessible. Life is so difficult and so overwhelming. Life experiences have been so amazingly challenging that the pain and the fear we live in is overwhelming. Yes, we recognize that. But to prepare ourselves to do the deeper work of Buddhist meditation practice, we have to get ready to know that this is a direction, that's the North Star: to cultivate a sense of relaxation, peace, and happiness.

What does it take to get there? Often it begins with a very simple grounding, a care and a tenderness for ourselves, taking into account what our challenges are, and figuring out a gentle, kind, and supportive way to be present and learn to be with what is there. There's no hurry. In Buddhism, we're not supposed to dive in and address suffering immediately, but to begin maybe on the edges of it, get a realistic assessment of what we're up against, and then do the things that support the creative foundation for addressing the suffering at the right time.

One of the key foundations of the Buddhist tradition is to live an ethical life, and really work carefully not only at the obvious ways of being ethical, but the more subtle and nuanced ways: with how we speak, to speak honestly and kindly, not harshly or angrily; and to practice generosity and start being generous. A friend of mine was challenged psychologically with difficult states of fear and distress, and her Buddhist teacher gave her the practice of being generous. In small ways, she started walking around, and wherever she could, she would help a little bit and do things for people. Just in small ways, it made such a big difference for her.

When we think about ethics, sīla^[4], it's actually things that you can do or not do, and it doesn't really require your inner state to be any different. It just means behaving differently, and behaving differently makes a huge difference. Some people go and volunteer at an animal shelter or at a homeless shelter. This idea that our behavior—generosity, kindness, ethics—these are the ways to begin gently on the side, to begin laying the foundation. The Buddha talked about how when we feel really confident that we're ethical, then there's the "bliss of blamelessness," a certain kind of happiness that at least our behavior is okay, even though inside things are hard.

And then, to cultivate contentment. To learn the art of being content with what we have. Of course, sometimes we have less than we need, less than ideal, and are challenged by poverty and being out of work. But even so, can we, in moments of the day, cultivate contentment? Contentment with this moment, contentment with this particular activity we're doing, and not be wrapped up in anger, resistance, and fear, thinking it has to be different. To cultivate some realistic kind of contentment with what we have is part of the path that begins laying a foundation.

Then we practice with the hindrances^[5] to understand something about how the hindrances operate in us and how we get caught in them. As we stop getting caught in the hindrances, our core suffering might still be there, but we're not adding more suffering on top of it. Then there can be a certain kind of joy, contentment, and gladness that we're not always being caught in our reactivity.

And then there's mindfulness of the body, to keep getting grounded, to get our sea legs and really stand here and be balanced with presence. To begin allowing and trusting the flow of our experience to be here, not resisting, not wanting, not so caught up in the reification and solidification of self around what the thinking keeps doing. And to do it in small dosages, just to begin opening and opening.

The Dance of Happiness and Suffering

When suffering is big, then this is the medicine. When suffering is not so big, or when we have the foundation already, then we keep practicing and cultivating and looking for the places where there can be well-being, looking for how to grow well-being in a realistic way. Part of that is to recognize how often there is some sense of well-being. If you walk out of your home today, and if it happens to be a sunny day and a nice day, it's possible to be so preoccupied and caught up that we don't notice. It's also possible to walk out and take some moments to appreciate the nice day, to appreciate the clear air, perhaps the sun and the warmth that there is. Look for opportunities to appreciate the life you have, not as a denial of suffering, but so that happiness and suffering can coexist.

Finally, I'd like to share a little saying: If you want to address suffering, call on the support of happiness. If you want to support your happiness, address your suffering. Those two go together: address suffering with the support of happiness; support happiness by addressing your suffering. They go back and forth.

And with that, I hope that you'll go deep to the end of suffering. Thank you for this morning, and I look forward to our chance to be together tomorrow.